You are here

Pages

The Yule Festival is still going on, through the 30th. If any of you have checked it out in the past you might want to have another look as they've added another 4 cosmetic items to the barter vendor.

They've also consolidated all Skirmish currency into three units: marks, medallions and seals. That means stuff that used to cost marks you could only get in level 65 instances can now be purchased with the same currency you get out of level 20 instances (with reasonable prices). Which is very cool for lower level players like me, but also kind of sucks that the level 65 item I bought off the auction house for 3 gold is now worth a couple hundred silver at best. Guess I'd better go farm... Black barley's still a pretty good crop.

How is the PvP or Monster part of the game going? I can only take PvE for so long so PvP is always good to change it up.

Varies tremendously server-to-server and specific days/times in the week. Eastern time evenings, the Ettenmoors on Brandywine are very busy. Now that they've given the F2P crowd access to the creep side of things (one class only by default, with others accessible for Turbine Points), its definitely re-invigorated things. There's a wonderful interview with a fellow Brit that goes into a lot of aspects of it from a few months back here.

I don't do PvMP myself, but one of the LotRO podcasts mentioned that PvMP will be slow for a time post HD release until enough freep players get their characters leveled up to the new cap. This is because all creeps are automatically at level cap, so freeps will stay out of the 'moors until they're up to cap.

No ... and yes ... there are some new deeds related to using your powers from the trait trees, some of which unlock virtues. Beyond those, virtues are still their delightful self, although unless you're into min/maxing, hard core raiding or want to excel at PvMP, I think they can be largely ignored by a lot of people.

The stats are nice, but with the soft caps for many of the base stats being readily reachable via solo quested gear by the time you reach Isengard expansion territory, I see them now as a way to get some more physical and tactical mitigation up, improving resistances etc. All of which are nice to have, but I know plenty of folks at max level who have never gone virtue chasing and only have unlocked those that they've encountered through normal gameplay.

For those that do want to max out the virtues, the addition of the doublers for TP from the store is a real boon, which very definitely takes a lot of the grind out of them.

I have to say that the shifted emphasis to raiding, and the reduction in complexity of skills, has turned me off of the game. It's disappointing.

There is? I haven't really noticed, but I wasn't into raiding beforehand, so perhaps it's all happening off my radar.

As to the reduced complexity, I say bring it on. The more streamlined, the better. As long as it doesn't nerf my character too badly, whatever helps me spend less time learning and memorizing skills and more time adventuring and exploring is OK in my book.

I booted up my Warden, and despite the initial confusion about trait trees and whatever, it seems to be business as usual for me: I quest, I kill things along the way, I enjoy the ride. And the crafting system? Love it. I blasted through Supreme and got my Westfold tailoring in like an hour.

Its always had the raiding scene, going right back to the original Angmar, and was probably at its height around the Moria days when there was always action to be had in the Rift, Helegrod or doing the Watcher. Cooled slightly with Mirkwood, Barad Guldur was painful without the right gear, but came back a bit more to the fore with Draigoch. But I think for the most players don't know the raids are there and aren't too concerned about them, and if you mention the Battle for Erebor or Flight to the Lonely Mountain you'll just get blank looks. Most people assumed that the end-game content for Riders of Rohan consisted of doing Hybolt dailies

For many, unless they're part of an active raiding guild or join GLFF its highly likely they wont know the raids happen, and can play through to max level without concerning themselves about them.

EDIT: Quick tour of the various bosses in LotRO, and their associated raids can be found be drifting through the boss list on the wiki.

Got my Warden to level 70, and just recently rolled into Enedwaith following the Epic. I let my VIP expire and totally forgot I didn't have any Quest Packs past Mirkwood, so I got one for Enedwaith. I'm thinking I should have saved the TP for Dunland and just stuck to the Epic through Enedwaith, since I'm already out-leveling everything from the get-go. Oh well, more to do I guess! And since it's all about the journey for me, I'm in no rush to see the end-game stuff.

I also started up a Captain the other day. I got him to 19, and will be heading to the Old Forest shortly. I forgot how much I love the low-level questing zones, how fun the Epic is in these areas, and how friggin' awesome the Captain is.

Got my Warden to level 70, and just recently rolled into Enedwaith following the Epic. I let my VIP expire and totally forgot I didn't have any Quest Packs past Mirkwood, so I got one for Enedwaith. I'm thinking I should have saved the TP for Dunland and just stuck to the Epic through Enedwaith, since I'm already out-leveling everything from the get-go. Oh well, more to do I guess! And since it's all about the journey for me, I'm in no rush to see the end-game stuff.

I also started up a Captain the other day. I got him to 19, and will be heading to the Old Forest shortly. I forgot how much I love the low-level questing zones, how fun the Epic is in these areas, and how friggin' awesome the Captain is. :)

Quick tip for Enedwaith, there are some really nice items, emotes, armor and weapons from both the Algraig and Grey Company, but for most of the good stuff you need to be kindred with the appropriate faction. Unlike Moria and prior, there are no items you can turn in for reputation, its just obtained with quested faction, and there's nowhere near enough quests to get to kindred in one pass through, so there are a bunch of repeatable quests.

Be wary if you want to get kindred with the Algraig, say for example you really, really want the fancy /dance_man3 emote which is only obtainable from them :p

There are more Grey Company quests and more repeatable Grey Company quests, and if you happen to go down one branch of the Grey Company quest lines, your ability to get faction with the Algraig from repeatable quests gets badly limited. More information can be found in this thread.

The Grey Company Steed is really the faction-specific item I have my eye on. Other than that, the Grey Company cosmetic set is the only other thing I'm after, and that's obtained through Epic questing, if I'm not mistaken. I'll probably pass on actively gaining reputation with the Algraig, but thanks for the heads-up regardless!

The game doesn't feel any different to me. Being a champion, before the update I killed mobs with three buttons. After the update, I kill mobs with three buttons. They are different buttons, but I put them in the same spot the old ones were, so profit.

The game doesn't feel any different to me. Being a champion, before the update I killed mobs with three buttons. After the update, I kill mobs with three buttons. They are different buttons, but I put them in the same spot the old ones were, so profit.

I used more than the three but now, yeah, it's pretty much just the three.

Is it just me, or is there no longer a "hedge" skill? I don't like being disarmed.

Can't comment on Laurelin itself, but a lot of the RP crowd hung out on Landroval since it was the unofficial RP server way back when Shadows of Angmar launched; some kins moved when when Laurelin was spun up, but there's still a fairly active scene on Landroval, Pony and Bree tend to be the center of things.

Highs point of Frostbluff, nice long narrative chains with different endings, culminating in the somewhat ballsy move to award some of the nicest cosmetics a week after the festival ends based on your choices during the festival; absolutely love that kind of thing. The theatre there, and the whole getting chosen to play one of the roles on stage, brilliant.

Low point of Frostbluff, the snowball fights and how they completely fail if there aren't enough other players around.

I never bother with the snowball fights. Usually I just do Empty Keg Emergency on each character for the daily (got two seals from one sack of presents) and then the rest on any character I want to level or buy goodies for. Did all the theater stuff in previous years.

For those of you doing it for the first time, I'd recommend siding with the poor in the final quest. After the event's ended you'll get a letter that'll net you a Frostbluff Dress/Robe of Thanks, which are very nice.

If you're interested in getting all of the cosmetics you're going to need at least four characters (two rich, two poor).

I'm almost done with tier 3 of Frostbluff questing with my dwarf, and between him and my hobbit, I've amassed a nice little collection of Yule goodies. I'm gonna try to get both steeds for both of them before it ends, too.

This has got me playing my old dwarf guardian again, too. I gave up on him a while back when I started my hobbit warden, and now I'm rediscovering how much I enjoy rolling around as a stocky dwarf with an awesome beard. I'm level 45, and have been questing in the Misty Mountains lately. I think I'm ready to head to Angmar for the Epic, do some side questing there, then head back and finish off the higher-level quests in MM and Goblin Town. After that it's probably off to Forochel to continue solo questing, doing the Epic as I go, and eventually I'll get to Eregion and then Moria - and as a dwarf, I'm really looking forward to that.

I'm still playing my hobbit warden, too; just got to level 71, rolling through Enedwaith like a boss. I'm approaching the point where I need to start thinking about either saving up my TP for Riders of Rohan, or shelling out cash.

I'd definitely recommend Rohan, there's a ton of stuff to do and bar Helm's Deep the world builders have done an outstanding job. Only moan would be Hybolt; having finally just finished rebuilding it, really not sure its worth it; just grab enough tokens for the class armor set bonuses on the way through.

I'd definitely recommend Rohan, there's a ton of stuff to do and bar Helm's Deep the world builders have done an outstanding job. Only moan would be Hybolt; having finally just finished rebuilding it, really not sure its worth it; just grab enough tokens for the class armor set bonuses on the way through.

The thing about Hytbold is that you can transfer all of the items between your characters so you really only need to do it once per account, per server. Though now that Helm's Deep is out the Hytbold goodies are no longer quite as enticing or important, unless you're just after a specific aesthetic. Hytbold armor is marked with a white-on-black tree icon.

The Yule Festival ends this Tuesday, the 14th. Hope everyone got all the cosmetics they wanted! I was considering taking one of my new characters in for some dailies, but with the bonus XP from VIP, I don't want to get too over-leveled.

I started two new dudes to try out: A human Lore Master, and a dwarf Hunter. The LM is a beast, fun to play, and has pets that I can pretty much set to aggressive and let do all the work. I have a hard time "getting into" spell-casters, though, so I don't know how long I'll stick with him. The Hunter, though, I can see using for the long haul. It's a class that offers something different than the usual sword/board tanking that I tend to do, which is great, and being a dwarf I can fulfill one of my LOTRO goals: getting a dwarf to Moria. I love dwarves and dwarven culture in Tolkien's world, so it's more of a nerdy fan thing than anything else.

My old dwarf Guardian is stalling out a bit: I can't see to get into a good groove with the Guardian post Helm's Deep, which is a shame. And my hobbit Warden, at level 72, is approaching the end of the content I own, so he's on "vacation" until I get Riders of Rohan.